Fractured Lullaby
by sapphire-child
Summary: Aaron has a nightmare and comes to Claire for comfort. AU future fic.


**Title: **Fractured Lullaby  
**Genre: **angst, hurt/comfort  
**Summary: **Aaron has a nightmare and comes to his mother for comfort. Future fic.  
**Original Post Date:**12/11/2007  
**Disclaimer:** Aaron and Claire belong to Lost and it's respective writers (unfortunately). Golden Slumbers/The End is a song performed by KD Lang for the Happy Feet soundtrack, originally written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney and I have used the lyrics herein.

* * *

_"Mummy…"  
_  
It is little more than a breathless whisper, so quiet that most wouldn't have even heard it above the cicadas and the night breeze tousling the branches outside the open window. But Claire spent more than enough time living in the wilderness that her senses are now acutely attuned to her surroundings. And the one person she's more attuned to than anyone else is...

"Aaron?" she murmurs sleepily, regarding her son through sleep-fuzzed eyes. "Sweetie…what're you up for? You should be in bed."

Aaron stands there for a moment before speaking, fidgeting restlessly, shifting his weight from one small foot to the other before he speaks.

"I had a bad dream," he whispers breathily, his voice quietly miserable with the memory of whatever it was that woke him up. "Can I-can I sleep with you mummy?"

"I thought you were okay with your nightmares now?" Claire says, more surprised than upset. "You told me you were a big boy now. A big brave boy."

"Mummy," Aaron's brow furrows, he looks close to tears as he admits his weakness. "Mummy, it was a really scary one this time. Please mummy, let me sleep with you."

Claire's eyes well up and she tries to hide them in the darkness as she pulls back the covers and ushers him in with her. Aaron climbs in beside her readily and curls his tiny body into her side. "Of course you can," she murmurs. "Mummy's here now – I'm gonna take care of you. Don't worry okay?"

Aaron nods, his head cushioned against her bosom and Claire wraps her arms around her child. At nearly four, Aaron still feels tiny and breakable in her arms. Vaguely she wonders if he's ever going to stop feeling so fragile to her – probably not.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks, bending down to kiss his mop of tow coloured hair. "What was the dream about?"

Aaron shudders against her, remembering, and Claire suppresses her own shiver and wonders if she really wants to know after all.

He's always had scarily vivid dreams – ever since he was a baby. And he always seems to dream of plane crashes and burning helicopters, of people getting pulled under dark waters by unidentifiable monsters and of unnamed menaces lurking in dark forests. He used to wake from them screaming bloody murder and it would always take until dawn to get him to close his eyes again, even with her holding him safe in her arms and stroking his hair and assuring him, over and over, that it was okay, she was here, she wasn't going to let anyone get to him.

Why her child has been cursed like this Claire doesn't know. She thinks back to Richard Malkin and what he told her before Aaron had even been born – that nobody else could raise him, that he was special, that he would need her…

Only now does she think she's really beginning to understand why. She's always had dreams that are just as lucid as his seem to be – it's probably an inherited trait. Even before the island she'd often had terrifying nightmares and woken up crying out for her mother. Her mother had always been very protective of her when this happened. Claire had never thought to ask her if she'd had bad dreams as a child too. Thomas and her Aunt Lindsey on the other hand had always been greatly disturbed by them and often just ignored her when she sat up all night, rocking back and forth, trying to slow her racing heart and calm her fevered mind.

"If you don't want to talk about it then its okay," Claire murmurs now to her own child. "We can just go to sleep if that's what you'd like to…"

"No, no, no," Aaron shakes his head, whispering frantically. "I don't want to dream it again and if I go to sleep then I'm gonna dream it again and again!"

"It can't have been that scary can it?" Claire jibes him gently, hoping that he'll relax if she uses humour to soften the terror. Aaron merely becomes more aggrieved, clinging onto the singlet top that she sleeps in and moaning.

"I don't want to see!" he manages to gasp out eventually. "He's trapped in there but I can't get him out and…and…" he pauses to take a breath and then lets out a wail, "Mummy I want to see my _daddy_!"

Claire's insides freeze, even as her arms tighten around him. She shuts her eyes to hide her tears as she strokes his hair possessively.

"Aaron, sweetie, you know you can't see daddy."

Aaron begins to sob in earnest then, burying his face in her chest, breaking her heart.

"But I w-want my d-daddy!"

"He told us not to worry about him while he's gone," Claire whispered. "Remember how I told you? And we don't want him to come back home one day and find out that we've been sooky while he's been away now do we?"

"I k-k-keep seeing him," Aaron hiccups. "And he's stuck in the room but he can't get out!"

"Shh," Claire kisses his hair again. "Don't worry – it was just a dream Aaron."

After a long time, Aaron's sobs quiet again and by the time the sun comes up again, he's fallen into a restless doze. Claire isn't so lucky. When her alarm goes off at seven she's still wide awake. Aaron seems cheerful enough when he wakes – monsters under the bed always seem to disappear with the morning sun – but Claire still feels restless. She leaves him to draw while she gets their breakfast ready.

The house seems deathly quiet after she drops him off at Playgroup and she turns on an old CD as she busies herself with vacuuming and cleaning. When she reaches Aaron's room she puts his toys back into the toy box and straightens the blankets on the bed that he hardly ever sleeps in.

And it's then that she sees the drawing.

Aaron always draws on butcher's paper in the thick crayons that she bought for him from the two dollar store. Normally she wouldn't pry into his collection – Aaron is very possessive of his drawings – but the strange shapes and dark colours of this particular drawing catches her eyes and she peers a little closer at his creation.

As she realises what he's drawn, her blood runs cold.

It's an airplane, breaking apart in midair. Claire snatches it up, utterly horrified as she scans the macabre details. People are falling out of the broken ends, downturned mouths replacing what should be screams of horror. The picture underneath this one is just as bad – it takes her a moment to realise that it's a beach scene where the water is red instead of blue and people with x's for eyes lie still on the sand…

Becoming more and more panicked, Claire riffles through the rest of the paper on his little table, searching for at least one drawing that is happy. Right at the bottom she finds it. Aaron has given everybody in this picture a big smiley face – even the man who is separated from the two of them, trapped in a box that is coloured in blue.

The symbolism is not lost on her – somehow she knows exactly who the man in the picture is meant to be. How exactly Aaron knows that Charlie drowned is a complete mystery to her. She's never told him and – to her knowledge – neither has anybody else. Until now, she has always been able to pass off Aaron's dreams as just that – dreams. Now however…

She shivers and replaces the drawings again.

That night Aaron comes to her in the middle of the night and wakes her by touching her face with one small paw. He's shaking so much with the terror that he can't even speak. His teeth chatter violently as she pulls him onto the bed with her and wraps her arms around him as tightly as she physically can. And as he clings to her and cries silent tears for the pain and suffering he sees every night within his own head, she sings him the lullaby that his father used to sing him to sleep with when he was a baby.

_Once there was a way to get back homeward  
Once there was a way to get back home  
Sleep little darlin' – do not cry  
And I will sing a lullaby..._


End file.
